Logan (Federal Protection Agency #9)

Chapter 20

CHAPTER 20

Logan

My knees hurt from crouching behind the couch for so long. While I shouldn’t be surprised about the lack of punctuality among criminals, I still wished they would show up when they were supposed to.

Thanks to Clay and Jordy’s information, we’d made great strides in the Bell ringer case. The Federal Protection Agency, a special task force focusing on crimes against children, had originally been formed out of members of law enforcement from several different states, as well as a few members of the FBI. Several private investigation firms, such as Alias Investigations had even been brought in shortly after the FPA’s inception. Recently, our numbers had grown again and there were many new faces in the FPA offices, and that meant more people working on this case, too.

Not only were the streets of Baton Rouge being cleaned up, but many other places as well.

In any other case, that kind of collaboration would have been cause for celebration, but our enemies were such a large, deeply rooted organization that even with so such manpower and resources, we were still struggling to make headway.

Recently, we’d managed to crack their access to one home security system. There was more, but even taking out one point of access would be a step in the right direction.

At least, that had been the original plan until my friend Roland, of all people, came up with a better idea.

Instead of shutting them out, we should use their own backdoor into the home security system to secretly monitor them and try to catch them in the act.

It had taken nearly a year to get to this point, but all that effort led me to my current position, kneeling behind the couch in a stranger’s home, waiting for our target to come through the door. The family that lived here was currently barricaded upstairs to keep them out of harm’s way. We’d only been able to loop the camera’s signal long enough to sneak a few agents, such as myself, into the house, and couldn’t risk evacuating the family in case our target noticed.

Luckily, the family had been willing to cooperate, though they were obviously terrified.

That had been hours ago. It was now nearing two in the morning. Based on the family’s usual routine, this would be the perfect time to sneak in.

So where were the fuckers?

As the minutes ticked by, and worry churned over and over in my brain, the soft crackle of my comm interrupted my thoughts.

“Be advised. Suspicious activity spotted on the north side of the house.”

I knew the same information echoed through the comms of the two other agents carefully stationed in the house, and it would also be heard by many others hidden throughout the neighborhood.

Another agent, Gloria Stayner, who I’d only just met a few days ago and had been assigned as the leader of our infiltration team, responded back.

“Can you be more specific? It’d be nice how many people are coming.”

“Negative,” the voice on the earpiece responded. “Visual confirmation was minimal. Assuming this is our target, they are being careful to stay out of sight.”

The team leader sighed audibly. “They’ve had a lot longer to study the area than we have. They probably have every streetlight, porch light, and security system in the entire neighborhood memorized. Everyone, stay alert and be ready for anything.”

Two minutes later, the telltale sound of the front door lock clicking open could be heard through the otherwise empty house.

From her position behind an armchair near the door, the team leader held up a fist in a silent signal to hold our positions.

I waited with my hand on my gun, but still kept the weapon holstered. Cold sweat dripped down the sides of my temples as I stared into the dark, my gaze fixed on the door.

The door opened. At least three people slipped inside. It was so dark I couldn’t see any details, but based on the shape of the shadows, I was almost certain it was only three people.

We could take three people. Hell, I’d take all three down myself if I had to.

The three intruders closed the door behind them and navigated through the house with the ease of people who had already memorized the layout.

Still, Agent Stayner signaled for us to stay where we were.

Logically, I knew why. The targets were still too close to the front door. If we revealed ourselves now, they might be able to get away.

Still, it was nearly impossible to wait while the target of my fury was right in front of me.

It would have been easier to hold back a volcano with only my bare hands, I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood in order to keep myself hidden behind that couch.

The intruders were nearly to the stairs leading to the upper floor when our team leader finally gave us the signal to move. She turned on the light in the dining room, which was far enough away to illuminate the area without blinding us, and I jumped up from behind the couch.

My gaze locked onto the nearest target, focusing solely on the gun in their hand. I never even looked at their face, as I disarmed their weapon and slipped around behind them to lock my arms around their neck in a chokehold. Their nails scratched desperately at my arm, but the long thick sleeves of my shirt protected me and made their struggles useless. Without any blood flowing to their brain, it took only thirty seconds for them to grow weak, and I lowered their body to the ground without releasing my hold on them.

Soon enough, they lost consciousness, but I still didn’t let go.

“Hollingsworth,” the Gloria shouted from across the room. “Hollingsworth. The bastard’s already unconscious. Let go before you kill him. We need to bring them all in alive.”

Growling low under my breath, I was so tempted to ignore the order and keep squeezing until the body under me stopped breathing. This monster harmed kids in the worst way possible. For all I knew, it could be one of the very people responsible for what had happened to Clay.

It was the thought of Clay that managed to calm me down and convince me to let go. In the year since I’d taken him to Maryland, he was doing so much better, and working his way toward healing. He needed justice the proper way. Vigilante murder wouldn’t help him, and it would probably get me booted from the case.

Standing up, I looked over at the team leader, where she had a struggling man pinned face down on the floor in a very efficient and painful armlock. She nodded at me, before returning her focus to her own target. My moment of almost-insubordination seemed to have been forgiven.

While I’d decided not to kill the man I’d taken down, I couldn’t help using my foot to kick his unconscious body over onto its back with more force than necessary.

I don’t know what I was expecting to see, but whatever my expectations were, they were significantly underwhelmed. In my mind, these Bell ringers were tantamount to monsters straight out of a child’s fable. The kind that parents would use to warm their children away from wandering off into the woods alone.

Yet, the person on the floor before me was just a guy. Not particularly old or young, and there was nothing outstanding about his appearance. It was the kind of man I wouldn’t have looked twice at if I passed him on the street.

Was it better or worse that the monster hunting kids in the dark was just a human?

Sudden shouting made me jump and raise my gun. Near the staircase, the third target had managed to slip away from the agent trying to subdue him, and stood with his back to the wall, gun in hand.

“Get away from me. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

The absurdity of the statement made me snort under my breath. I would never understand the inner workings of these people’s minds, but surely this man couldn’t be delusional enough to think himself innocent.

The agent that had accidentally let their target go was obviously peeved about the mistake and pointed their own weapon at the man with a calm hand and a steady gaze.

“So, breaking into other people’s homes is just a harmless hobby is it,” they taunted the man. “Give it up. This is the end of the line for you. Come quietly and you won’t get hurt.”

“No,” the man shouted as his gaze darted from side to side, looking for any possible escape. “I’ve been to prison once. I’m not going back.”

He raised his gun with intent, and for a moment, I feared he was about to commit suicide-by-cop and force us to shoot him. However, his gun never pointed at any of us, and instead he kept raising it until the barrel pressed against his own temple.

“No,” our team leader shouted, but it was too late.

The man pulled the trigger, and the wall beside him was painted red.

I stared at the freshly dead body that dropped to the floor and tried to summon an ounce of sympathy. Death should be sad, and a loss of life should never be taken lightly.

Yet, I felt nothing but a vague sense of relief, like finding out that the dirty dishes in the sink had already been washed and I could cross that chore off my list.

Maybe I needed to go back to therapy for a bit. This case seemed to be affecting me more than I realized if that was my only reaction to watching someone commit suicide in front of me.

With one target dead and one unconscious, arresting them didn’t take very long. The one conscious target complied silently with every instruction we gave him and didn’t utter a word as we shoved him into the back of a cop car in handcuffs beside his unconscious accomplice.

The dead body would be taken to the morgue and dealt with accordingly. Even criminals had a family, and they had a right to bury their loved one. If a member of my family turned out to be involved in something like the Bell ringers, I’d have them cremated and dump their ashes in a distant landfill, but I kept that suggestion to myself.

We had just set the two living targets off in a cop car, when new information came through the radios. An unlicensed van had been caught trying to flee the area. It had been stopped, but the agents were now in a standoff as the driver refused to exit the vehicle.

With a quick order, Agent Stayner directed us to the site of the standoff.

Just like the man I’d taken down, the van was also completely unremarkable. It looked more like the kind of oversized minivan a mother would use to take a horde of kids to soccer practice, rather than a tool for kidnapping. The only thing suspicious about it was how fast it had been driving away from the scene of the crime, and the fact that its license plate had a quick release catch that would allow it to be swapped out at a moment’s notice.

It was only through sheer luck that I arrived just in time to hear the request for permission to shoot the target in the van.

“Wait,” I jumped forward to interject. “Don’t do that.”

Our team leader was the highest-ranking officer present and had taken over command of the situation as soon as she arrived. She looked at me with a question in her eyes as she held the radio up ready to reply to the request.

“We’ve already apprehended two suspects alive. Keeping this one alive isn’t vital to the mission and extracting him from the car alive will put our agents in a lot more risk.”

“I know, but…” I gestured toward the van. “Look at the size of the vehicle. The targeted family only had one prospective victim, and a single child doesn’t take up much space. There’s no reason for them to have a van this large. even if it was meant to transport all four members of their team, it’s still bigger than they would need.”

Agent Stayner’s eyes narrowed under the glare of the streetlight as she studied the van. “You think there might be others?”

“Other kids. Other perpetrators. I don’t know, but something about it doesn’t sit right with me. We can’t open fire when we don’t know for certain what we’re firing at.”

Thankfully, the team leader listened to me and denied the order to open fire.

“All right, Hollingsworth. Got any more bright ideas about how to get the target out of the van without gunfire.”

I glanced toward the van again, making sure it was designed the way I thought it was. Although it resembled a minivan, it still had large double doors at the back like a cargo van.

“We pretend like we’re going to use deadly force to keep the target occupied. Meanwhile, someone sneaks around back and opens the back door. We can sneak up on the target, hopefully, or at least get a better look at what’s waiting for us inside.”

“All right.” The team leader relayed these instructions through the radio, before giving me a smirk. “You know how to pick a lock, Hollingsworth?”

I nodded hesitantly, already suspecting where this was going.

“Then, since this is your idea, you get the honor of doing the sneaking.”

I sighed, but I wasn’t unhappy about the outcome. I probably would have volunteered anyway, but there was something annoying about being ordered to do it when the plan had been mine from the start.

There wasn’t any time to waste. Within a minute, I managed to sneak around through a few back yards to put myself behind the van without the target seeing me. As soon as I was in place, several heavily armed agents approached the van from the front, making a big scene and shouting threats at the target to keep his attention pointed forward.

My lock picking skills were rustier than I’d like, and took me more than one attempt, but I managed to get the back of the van unlocked and cracked the door open just enough to peek inside.

Some of the seats had been pulled out of the van to create empty space at the back. A rough brown blanket covered something that at first seemed like supplies, until I noticed the blanket moving. There were people under the blanket, and based on the size, they weren’t adults.

The only adult in the van that I could see was the driver. From this angle, I would have a perfect shot at the back of his head. He’d never even know I was here before he died.

Vengeance would be sweet, but that wasn’t why I was here. I needed to get the kids out and let the other agents handle the driver.

I opened the door as little as possible and kept myself low so the van’s seats would cover me as I grabbed the kids, blanket and all. The two bodies I felt were much smaller than I expected and took almost no effort to pick them up.

The driver shouted when he noticed what I was doing, but I pulled the kids out of the van and kicked the door shut before he could even turn around.

As I ran down the street with a small body in each arm, I heard the chaos of open gunfire rattle the air behind me.

Once a safe distance away from the violence, I set my burdens down on the side of the curb and pulled the blankets away.

A pair of children blinked up at me with terrified eyes. A boy and a girl, both under the age of ten. They were bound and gagged, with heavy tear tracks down their cheeks, and both looked to be on the verge of hyperventilating.

“It’s okay,” I said with the same soothing tone I’d used with Clay when I approached him in his apartment. “I’m not going to hurt you. You’re safe. Okay? Just let me get these off you.”

With careful fingers, I reached for the gag in the girl’s mouth, but she pulled back and shook her head.

“No, wait. It’s okay. It’s okay.” I tried to explain, but it didn’t work. To them I was just another adult that wanted to hurt them.

“Here. Look.”

I pulled out my badge and held it up for them to see. They stopped struggling but didn’t seem any more inclined to let me near them.

“See this badge? I’m like a cop. The police. That means I protect people. Understand?”

The kids’ eyes remained narrowed in suspicion, but this time they didn’t pull away when I reached for them, and I was able to remove their restraints.

As soon as they were free and they realized I wasn’t trying to trick them, both kids immediately started crying and dove back into my arms. I held them right there on the side of the street, whispering words of comfort as we waited for the rest of the situation to calm down.

There was one other thing I’d noticed, though. Neither of these kids was blond.

The daughter of the family that we’d protected earlier perfectly fit the description of the Bell ringer’s usual targets. She could have been a female version of Clay when he was younger.

These two, however, were completely different. Based on their ages, they were a better fit for the preferred victims of the pedophile ring that Alias Investigations had brought down.

It was just more evidence for what we already suspected. These two trafficking rings, which had originally seemed like independent cases, were just branches of a much larger tree. There was no telling how many branches this tree had, but tonight proved that they were not only organized, but also helping each other.

While I was glad we saved these victims tonight, it also brought a sense of despair.

No matter how many branches we cut off, this criminal tree would never die until its roots were dug up.

I wasn’t sure if we had a shovel large enough for the task.